


Into the Digital Age

by Mapal, NerineLunaCyran



Category: Original Work, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapal/pseuds/Mapal, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerineLunaCyran/pseuds/NerineLunaCyran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Warning: While this is written in the Supernatural universe, it features no canon characters, and is probably more closely considered Original Work than Supernatural fanfiction. That's because this is sort of a promotional fic for something we're working on with the HI team. Something that we believe a lot of SPN fans would be interested in. So before you scroll past this because it doesn't feature your canon characters, please give it a try! :)]</p><p>Hunters tended to work on their own, maybe keeping in contact with a handful of others. And while that worked with normal monsters and demons, being able to get the information you needed from one of the others in your little circle, it didn’t really work for the big stuff. Getting into contact with a hunter on the other side of the country was hard enough, let alone getting into contact with one from another country. No, if they were going to be able to communicate about global events like this efficiently - something that really wouldn’t be a luxury, to be honest - they had to find another way. A few contacts in a mobile phone really didn’t cut it.</p><p>Part of the <a href="http://huntersinternational.org">Hunters International</a> project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gabriella had been studying for the exam that was scheduled for next week, when she saw something moving out of the corners of her eyes. She looked up just in time to see a falling star drop behind the skyline of the city.

She smiled. It wasn’t every day you were able to see a falling star, after all. And with this test coming up, there was no harm in wishing for a high mark, right?

Her smile disappeared when she saw another light flash through the sky. Followed by another. And another. And even more lights were still falling.

Gabriella quickly realised that these were probably not falling stars after all. And while it might have been a meteor shower, if that was the case she would have probably heard about it. After all, a meteor shower this big would have been announced somewhere, wouldn’t it? No, this was probably something a little bit more out of the ordinary.

She rummaged through one of her desk drawers, until she found the mobile phone she was looking for. She only used this one for contacting other hunters, wanting to keep her hunting life separated from her normal life. After all, if any of her friends saw one of those text message, mentioning something like a ghost or werewolf, there would be a lot to explain. It was easier to keep it separated like this. And it also meant she knew immediately when a hunter called, instead of a friend.

She punched in the number of one of her contacts, Mario, who she knew should be in Rome at the moment as well. It rang two times, before being picked up.

“Gabriella, you calling about those falling stars?”

“I don’t think they’re stars, to be honest,” Gabriella replied. “You have any idea what it might be? I’m afraid it’s something supernatural, seeing as I don’t think we were expecting a meteor shower or whatever, but I don’t have a clue what it could be.”

“Just as clueless as you are, then,” Mario replied. “Maybe one of the others knows, though.”

“Okay. You call Ricardo, then I’ll call Tony. I’ll call you back if any of them knows anything.”

She hung up, and punched in a new number. While she waited for the person at the other side to pick up their phone, she opened up some local news blogs. With the internet being one of the fastest ways to get information nowadays, maybe one of them knew anything about what was going on. Unfortunately, none of them had anything on the supposed meteor shower yet, but then again, it had only been about five, maybe ten minutes.

Tony picked up shortly after, but although he was seeing the same thing as her, he didn’t know anything either. He offered to call one of his contacts up further north.

“Okay, let me know if they know anything. Mario is already calling Ricardo by the way. Wait a moment.”

One of the blogs she had opened just updated. She quickly skimmed the post, seeing if there was anything in there that was in any way useful.

“Okay, seems like this isn’t just happening here. I’m reading an article here that mentions similar things happening all over the country. Even a mention about people outside of Italy tweeting about it.”

“You know, there’s a contact I have in Ukraine that might know more then. Afraid I don’t have a name though, but I believe he is somewhat at the top of their hunter society. Something to do with Knights or whatever, never really bothered to learn how exactly they work over there. Anyway, from what I know about him, he’s living at some sort of command base, meaning they probably have quite a bit of information lying around there. If this is happening outside of Italy as well, you could try him.”

Gabriella sighed. She didn’t really like having to do international calls. Especially not if the one she was going to be calling was going to be some sort of hot shot in that country. She wrote down the number Tony gave her anyway, knowing that getting info on whatever was going on was more important than her aversion towards international phone calls. She hung up shortly after, immediately punching in the number she had written down.

It took a couple of moments, but finally her call got picked up.

“Another international call? Since when am I internationally recognised? It’s flattering, really, but still. So, is there the slightest possibility you’re calling with some good news or is this another disaster?” The guy on the other side sounded weary.

“Uhm, I’m actually calling to see if you know anything about what is going on,” Gabriella said, feeling sorry for the guy. “I’m Gabriella Romano by the way, from Italy. We’ve been having something that looks like a meteor shower over here, but we’re not exactly sure if it actually is a meteor shower, if you know what I mean.”

There was a moment of silence, before the guy, who she still hadn’t gotten a name from, answered. “I’ve been handing out bad news all day, so I’ll just be blunt. It looks like an angel fall out. From what we’ve pieced together, for some reason, the angels are falling out of Heaven. Whether they’ve got bodies or not, what they want, what could have caused it - that we don’t know. But there’s definitely angels, and that’s not been the best sign these last few years.”

Gabriella needed a moment to process what she had just heard.

“So you’re saying all these falling lights I’m seeing here are angels? All of them?”

“Well.. Unless you happen to be having a meteor shower at the same time, I’d say so. Pretty much guarantee it.”

Gabriella groaned. “Fuck, that’s not good. Not good at all. Can I ask how you got this information? Since you said that you don’t really know anything about the how or why.”

“Hunter in America got it from a demon. Seems like, as always, it’s centered on them, so count that as a blessing. I’d usually take a demon’s word with a pinch of salt, but they weren’t questioned - they were just laughing.”

“Demons laughing, that’s always a bad sign. And if what I’m seeing outside of my window is not the centre, I don’t even want to know how it looks over there. Well, thank you for the information, I’ll be passing it along to the others here in Italy. Shall I call if someone on my side gets any more info?”

“That’d be great. I’m trying to keep on top of what’s going on, so anything you can pass on would help.”

“Sure,” she said. “I didn’t quite catch your name, by the way.”

“Petro,” the guy answered. “Although, since you’re Italian, you can call me Pietro, or Peter, whatever you’ll remember. I’ll take anything close.”

Gabriella smiled. The guy wasn’t so bad after all. “Well then, Pietro, thanks again. I’ll see if we got any contacts outside of Italy here, try and get the word out. I’ll call if I know anything new.”

“I’ll return the favour. Hopefully it’ll be the ‘they’re all powerless’ kind of news and not the ‘they’re out to kill us all’ kind.”

“Let’s hope so,” she replied, before ending the call.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriella sat slumped in her chair, sitting in a large lecture hall, pretending to be paying attention to the Professor at the front. It wasn’t that the subject he was lecturing about wasn’t interesting, but her mind was too occupied with other things. Specifically, angels.

If all those falling things she had seen really had been angels, and it had happened all over the world, they really were in big trouble. Especially if not all hunters knew they were angels. She had gotten lucky by getting into contact with Petro, and while she knew everyone was busy trying to get in contact with as many people as they could, trying to get the word out, their people just weren’t connected enough for it to work efficiently.

Hunters tended to work on their own, maybe keeping in contact with a handful of others. And while that worked with normal monsters and demons, being able to get the information you needed from one of the others in your little circle, it didn’t really work for big stuff like this. Getting into contact with a hunter on the other side of the country was hard enough, let alone getting into contact with those from other countries. No, if they were going to be able to communicate about this efficiently, something that really wouldn’t be a luxury, they had to find another way. A few contacts in a mobile phone really didn’t cut it.

A few plinging noises to her right caught her attention. She looked up to see the girl to her right turning a bit red, while quickly clicking through something on her laptop. Probably her sound settings.

She chuckled. The girl really should know better than to leave her sound on when going on social media in class.

Gabriella mentally hit herself. Of course! Why hadn’t anyone though about this earlier. They were living in the digital age, weren’t they? A social media site was the perfect way to get hunters from all over the world connected. Getting the word out about something through something like that would be so much easier than having to manually call everyone in your own circle of contacts, and getting them to contact everyone they knew, and so on.

Only problem was, with the kind of information and questions hunters would probably be having, they would no doubt end up on some sort of government watch list, probably in more than one country if they did make it an international connection point. She had been following the news. Government agencies were getting more and more ruthless with invading the privacy of their citizens, and even those of other countries. And it really wouldn’t do to have some sort of government investigation started because someone asked if anyone knew the quickest way for them to get new silver bullets or something. No, a general social media site, with the flimsy privacy terms those things had, would not do. Not at all.

 

***

 

“Hey, Antonio!” Gabriella exclaimed, sprinting after one of her classmates. “Do you have a moment?”

She was pretty sure he knew his way around a computer, and even had her suspicions about him being involved in a bit of hacking.

The guy stopped and turned around, clearly surprised to have her calling after him. “Yeah. I’ve got a free period now. Gabriella, right?”

She nodded. “We worked together on that project for Professor Montuori last year.”

Antonio smiled. “Oh yeah, I remember now. Real pain in the ass that one was.”

Gabriella chuckled. “You could say that. Anyway, I was wondering, you’re good with computers, right? Coding, stuff like that?”

Antonio shrugged, before leaning against the wall, dropping his backpack to the ground next to him. “Depends on what you need.”

Giovanna fought the urge to roll her eyes. He was clearly trying to go for the macho look at the moment, but she wasn’t affected. After all, she faced a lot more intimidating creatures on a semi-regular basis. Being a hunter had it’s perks, not being flushed by guys trying to impress her was one of them.

“I need someone who can build me a website.”

“What kind of website?”

She thought a moment about how to explain what she wanted. “Something to connect people, where they can interact. Post stuff, ask questions, reply to others. Bit like facebook, I guess.”

“Any reason why you need a new website, when you can just as easily use facebook then?”

“You know just as well as I do that the privacy terms for that suck. As do those of most other social media sites.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “And what would you be doing that needs the upgrade in security?”

“That’s none of your business,” she answered. “I just need to know if you can help me, or if I’m going to need to find someone else.”

Antonio was silent for a moment, before apparently coming to a conclusion. “I think I can help you. Or at least point you in the direction of someone who can. But not here. Not that I’m involved with anything illegal, mind you, but I’d rather not discuss this in the middle of a university hallway.”

Gabriella inwardly grinned. Her suspicions had just been confirmed, he was involved with some hacking. Not that she really minded, she and her other hunter contacts were doing stuff that was pretty much illegal or shady quite often as well.

“Your place or mine?” she asked.

“We can use my place. It’s the eastern block, number 89. Does seven work for you? I’ll cook.”

She nodded. “Seven’s fine.”

“Okay then, see you tonight.” With that, Antonio picked up his back and walked away, leaving a grinning Gabriella behind.

 

***

 

At half past seven, Gabriella was sitting across Antonio at his dinner table, two steaming bowls of risotto in front of them.

They ate without speaking, the silence not really awkward, but not all that comfortable either.

When they were about halfway through their meal, Antonio finally spoke up.

“So, you need some kind of social media site with better security that what’s out there. You need to discuss stuff that you don’t want everyone to be able to look in on.” It wasn’t a question.

Which meant she also didn’t need to answer.

“You know, you really just need to get your servers secure. It’s just a matter of some firewalls and passwords, you don’t need someone like me for that.”

This time, she didn’t resist the urge, and rolled her eyes. “I know the basics of computers and servers, Antonio. If it was just a matter of setting some passwords, I would just do it myself.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What are we talking about then? What level of security do you need?”

“Highest you can get,” she responded.

“Highest I can get, or highest available?”

“Depends,” Gabriella answered. “How big is the difference between what you can get me, and the best there is?”

Antonio snorted. “I’m flattered you think so highly of my skills, but I’m afraid I’m not that good. Care to tell me what you need such a secure server for?”

Now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “You seriously expect me to tell you? Wouldn’t really need a protected server if I just told everyone who wanted to know, would I?”

“Hey, I totally understand that protected servers are useful, just wanting to make sure I’m not helping you with anything illegal. Or well, really illegal.”

“If I was doing something really illegal I wouldn’t take the risk of talking with someone I really don’t know that well. Now, can you help me or not?”

Antonio was silent for a moment, before nodding. “I know there’s this person, they’re from the UK I believe, and word is they can get into everything they want. If they know how to break into it, they probably also have a pretty good idea about how to protect it. I can try and get into contact with them, but I can’t promise anything.”

“So, how legal is this guy?” she asked, pretty sure she knew the answer already.

“It’s your choice,” he answered, shrugging. “I’ll try and reach them if you want, but if you don’t you’re probably going to have to start looking somewhere else. I can tell you though, it’s not going to be easy.”

Gabriella sighed, and made a decision. It wasn’t as if everything she did as a hunter was exactly legal. And this was for a good cause, right? It wasn’t as if she was going to break into anything, she just needed some secure servers. This project was going to help her, help hunters all over the world. So if she needed some help from some shady guy, so be it.


	3. Chapter 3

   It was all quiet in the house when Izzy got home from work. She was greeted by Suzie at the door, the large white ball of fur rubbing up against her for some attention. “Hey there, girl,” she muttered, throwing her car keys down in the bowl near the door and heading into the house. The sound of the shower running upstairs suggested that Connie or Amber was home too. Izzy headed to her room with Suzie in tow, taking off her coat and hanging it on the back of her bedroom door.

It wasn't so much a bedroom as a command centre. Her desk was set up with five screens, two computers and a laptop, with two keyboards for the computers and copious amounts of papers and files and electrical supplies dotted around on the surface of the desk. The set up took up the whole corner of her room on a specialised piece of furniture that David had built for her.

The computers were whirring idly, one processing a large data download from that morning and the other keeping tabs on things that were happening in various chat rooms. The laptop had a blogging site open on it, because everyone needed to relax sometimes. She logged into her various systems and settled down in her chair, Suzie at her feet. She had received a message the previous night from someone in Italy asking for a contact email. It was someone she had seen around a few times in the chats, a fellow hacker.

She had used a cover email, an address and a trace that led to a dead end. The message that was sat in her inbox, however, was certainly not from Antonio, the person who had requested the contact in the first place. She raised an eyebrow as she read the message, asking for a site that was completely secure and safe from government eyes. If that didn't sound suspicious, she didn't know what would.

“Highest security you can get,” Izzy mumbled to herself as she read the email again. It took her hardly any time at all to set her home-made hacking program to work to get into the emails of the person contacting her. It was always better safe than sorry when the government was trying to find you. It wasn't like she had done anything that illegal, maybe just hacked into the government systems and had a little poke around.

Izzy left the program running as she went to get a drink from the kitchen and a snack. By the time she had made her sandwich and poured some orange juice, she was finally into the emails. She settled back down and took a bite from her peanut butter sandwich as she browsed through the messages in the inbox. They were all pretty mundane, the usual back and forth emails and some promotional offers. She clicked on a few conversations that seemed interesting.

It was a personal email account, nothing too suspicious at all. To her experienced eye it was just a girl wanting a secure website for some reason. And that was just the catch for her. Why would a young uni student need such a secure place? Her answer lay in an email to an apparent friend, who turned out to be a bit of a colleague. After the words “hunter” and “supernatural” popped up, Izzy started to understand. The emails were pretty cryptic, but to a fellow hunter it was clear who this girl was now.

A phone call would be quicker and easier in that case, not to mention safer. She set a trace running on the girl's IP address, ISP and internet browsing history, fishing out a dummy phone from her drawer. It was full of them, all with random SIM cards that couldn't be traced back to her in any way. It took a while for her to build a profile for 'Gabriella', but eventually she started to see more and more information about the girl. People really had to be more careful about the information they put online.

Her jackpot came when she dove further into the emails to find she had shared a phone number with a fellow hunter. She grinned to herself and tapped the number into the phone, pressing it to her ear as it rang.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the Hunters International project. For more information on HI you can go [here](http://huntersinternational.tumblr.com/tagged/faq). The basics are that we have different people writing SPN fanfic for different countries. That means that whenever there's characters mentioned from another country, they're usually thought up by the writer for that country.
> 
> Gabriella and all Italian characters are thought up by Nerine.  
> Isabella and all UK characters are from Mapal's story Show Me That You're Human.  
> Petro and all Ukrainian characters are from InkorStardust's The Hut on Fowl's Legs.


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